Mysteries & Thrillers, Teenagers, and WWII | January 2025 Reading Wrap Up

if you've not even started the series the first book is called A peculiar combination and four books you can read that so fast especially how well-paced these books are how much you're going to want to tear through them

some of the jokes did land with me some of them actually made me laugh which was a very pleasant surprise I also loved all of the Pittsburgh references I live here I love it here so I love hearing Pittsburgh talked about pretty much any book that's set here in Pittsburgh I will at least give a chance and I'm glad I gave this one a chance it's not going to be a favorite of the year or anything but I'm glad I read it

I can't stand when characters are dropping a whole bunch of money without recognizing where it's coming from it's one of the reasons why I found night film by Marisha pestle so intolerable

I absolutely loved it's not the perfect book but I do think it made for a very satisfying conclusion to this series that I have absolutely fallen in love with

even though I do suspect this is going to go on to become a five-star read because it is so brilliant there are chapters that keep me more engaged than others

that element transformed this book into something so haunting something that I've not been able to stop thinking about since I put this book down

I loved this one so much that I made a full Deep dive video on it

it is shockingly thorough I will give the author that he did so much research to bring every stage of these netsukes history to life for us but I have to admit I was just so bored reading a lot of this

unfortunately as I started reading my fears became realities because just like the Searcher this book is way too slow and also there weren't enough plot points to really pull the story forward

Lucy Foley unravels the threads of the story it's such a measured clip like she draws out tension just enough for it to be satisfying and then concludes the book at just the right time in a very intell ENT way

sometimes those could be funny I did chuckle on occasion sometimes I did find her to be very relatable mainly because I also took Russian in college but the main thing I felt as I was reading this was bored it's excruciatingly boring

I didn't like this one quite as much as the Lonely Hearts hotel or when we lost our heads but it was a good one

I had already read the Paris apartment which I really liked I thought it was very well executed

the pacing of the book is really bad and it is far too long even the ending was drawn out so much that it felt so tedious and melodramatic I started to get physically uncomfortable like I just wanted the book to be over

just like the Searcher this book is way too slow and also there weren't enough plot points to really pull the story forward so I found that both the first book and the second are guilty of the same crime

this book is what I would refer to as survivalist fiction which normally isn't my kind of thing it is very well written I like Lauren gra so that wasn't really a surprise but I also felt like I read this at just the right time

I didn't like this one quite as much as the Lonely Hearts hotel or when we lost our heads but it was a good one

much in the same way that wild alone did not work for me back in 2015 the idiot did not work for me in 2025